Rising
by vindictive trollop
Summary: "It's nice to meet you," Lily says after she's finished eating, soft and quiet like someone will overhear, or like Maleficent will hear it too clearly. And she does. It feels like it felt earlier: like there's something in her throat, stopping her from speaking, so she does not speak at all. She hugs her instead.


**I wrote this before Lily and Maleficent actually met. God, did I have high hopes.**

* * *

"Maleficent, this is your daughter. This is Lily."

 _Stupid girl,_ Maleficent wants to seethe, _I know who she is_ , and she does, she knows the very moment that she lays eyes upon the young woman who comes to Storybrooke with Regina and the Savior, looking odd and out of place and uncertain of herself. But she cannot speak at all; it feels like something is in her throat, blocking all of her words. She wants to feel Lily's name on her mouth, wants to hear herself say it, wants to do anything but stand there feeling like—

Like something has reached into her chest and touched her heart, something warm and loving and she is suddenly saying her daughter's name. _Her daughter_. "Lily," she says, and she wants to — do anything, anything but stand here and stare, but she cannot, and her voice sounds-feels much calmer than she expects. It's like there is a storm raging inside of her, arcs of lightning striking throughout the curves of her ribcage and clouds fogging her mind, but her voice is nothing but soft and loving and something is making her vision blurry.

"That is a beautiful name," Maleficent says, and it's the truth, but more than that, _Lily_ is beautiful. Her daughter is beautiful and she has missed the first three decades of her life and—

And Lily smiles tightly, ducks her head a little like she doesn't know what to say and perhaps she doesn't, and Maleficent feels herself falling, falling, falling—

Regina brushes her arm as she passes, whether on accident or on purpose remains unknown. After a moment of hesitation, the Savior follows her, and they are left alone, standing on a sidewalk in the sun. Maleficent swallows, blinks until her vision is clear again.

Lily is watching her, lips pressed together in a thin line. At last, she ( _my daughter_ , Maleficent thinks again and again, because it makes her feel like she is rising and rising and rising) glances away, as though she does not want to look at Maleficent any longer. The very thought burns somewhere deep inside of her, not quite like fire. Fire has never _hurt_ her before.

"Do you want to get something to eat, or...something?" the other asks, shifting her weight from one leg to the other. It's all the signs of discomfort that Maleficent doesn't want to see. Not in her child. This is _her_ child, the one she's never gotten to see before, or held, or fed, or taught. Maleficent inclines her head in a nod, feels her fingers shaking as she steps closer and moves her hand over the slope of Lily's shoulder. She is solid, Maleficent reminds herself. She is real. She is _here_ , and she is not moving away, she has not flinched from her touch.

She settles her hand at the center of Lily's back, splays her fingers outwards. "Yes," she says, and she is to be applauded: her voice doesn't tremble at all. Lily looks at her, pulls her bottom lip beneath her top teeth, white like pearls against the pink of her mouth. She looks, for a moment, like she wants to say something — but she does not, and a silence falls, tense like a string about to snap.

"Do you like milkshakes?" Maleficent asks, and her daughter looks almost comically taken aback by the question. She can't quite blame her; she's never imagined that she would ask anyone that question before. She's only ever had a milkshake once before, upon Ursula's insistence. Both Cruella and Ursula had laughed at the look on her face when she'd taken the first sip.

Maleficent had decided, that night, that she did not like milkshakes, but she will drink twenty of them if it means being with Lily.

"Uh, yeah," the girl responds, something like laughter in her voice. It eases the tension from the air. Maleficent can almost feel it, like something has changed again, but this time for the better. "I mean, who doesn't?"

"What flavor?" she speaks as they start walking. If Maleficent closes her eyes and stops thinking, she can pretend that it has always been this way, that Lily was never lost to her, that she had never even been able to name her own child. But she does not stop thinking, and she does not close her eyes. Still—for now, it is enough, because Lily is replying, and Maleficent listens.

They sit at the docks. It is by far the quietest place in Storybrooke. Maleficent watches Lily unwrap her burger, take a sip of her milkshake, stare out over the water. She eats, too, though she never looks away from her daughter. It helps to distract her from the disgusting taste of what she is certain isn't real meat in her mouth. She takes a sip of her drink to wash it down, and counts the seconds that Lily does not move to the end of the bench that they're sitting on together just to widen the space between them.

"You don't actually like milkshakes, do you?" says Lily, only after she's finished her burger; but there's something in her voice, something like she is trying very hard not to laugh and almost-succeeding.

"No," Maleficent admits ruefully, but she still takes the last noisy sip through the straw and sets it aside, looking at the way Lily's hair glints in the sunlight. She reaches out, driven by a sudden impulse; she strokes her fingertips through the dark hair that spills over Lily's shoulders haphazardly, and the younger woman tenses, each muscle locking. She can feel it, see it in the way that Lily freezes. Maleficent draws her hand away as though struck, bites the inside of her mouth until she tastes a burst of copper and imagines the red of her own blood.

"I didn't mean to startle you, dear."

Lily shakes her head, and her hair pools around her hand as she pulls her fingers through it. "You didn't." It's a lie. They both understand this, but neither mention it. "It's fine. If you're not gonna finish that burger, I will."

Maleficent raises a brow and holds it out, the paper around it crinkling in the silence. "It's all yours."

Lily bites into it, like she is ravenous, and Maleficent thinks of all the times that she must have gone hungry and cannot breathe for a moment, so she directs her gaze out over the water and thinks of something— _anything_ —that does not involve her daughter. It's very difficult.

"It's nice to meet you," Lily says after she's finished eating, soft and quiet like someone will overhear, or like Maleficent will hear it too clearly. And she does.

It feels like it felt earlier: like there's something in her throat, stopping her from speaking, so she does not speak at all. She hugs her instead.

It isn't planned. She looks at Lily when Lily is looking at her and she is suddenly feeling too much, thinking too much, and she acts—and she has never hugged anyone before, and had never planned to, but it's easy enough.

It does not feel easy afterwards. It feels like regret, like something cold is slicking up her spine, crawling into the pit of her stomach and festering, but then Lily wraps her arms around her, and her breath is shuddering against the place between Maleficent's shoulder and neck, and the regret starts to ebb steadily away.

It is here that Maleficent's opinion of Emma Swan changes. Perhaps the Savior _had_ been good for something after all.


End file.
